


Negative Split

by allyoops



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Kidnapping, Rape and Rescue, Rape for Revenge, Rape of Opportunity, Raping one character for the effects on another, Rapist films rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-02 06:44:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19436059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allyoops/pseuds/allyoops
Summary: He's never been one to pass up an opportunity, and she's a more welcome one than most.The fact that he can also use her to spike her father's guns just makes it that much better.





	Negative Split

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nonconamod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonconamod/gifts).



> A gift for the collection of Nonconathon 2019.

“What do you want to bet my dad won’t make it? Again.”

Shannon spoke lightly, as if it were a joke: a thing that didn’t matter. Emberly, not fooled, smiled at her friend in real sympathy as she opened her locker to shove her swim bag into the depths.

“He might, Shan. I mean, this is the _one_ isn’t it? He promised he’d come for tristate. And hell, if my gran can drag her ass all the way out from Iowa for this, don’t you think your dad will probably be able to tell his boss to suck it, just this once?”

“My father has never in his _life_ told anybody to suck it,” Shannon said positively.

“Well,” Emberly shrugged, reaching for her suit, goggles and regulation cap, “maybe your swim meet’s the day he starts.”

It was a nice thought. Shannon was tempted to nurture it to full-fledged hope, but she was too old to believe in fairy tales.

* * *

Michael Abbott had not actually told his boss to suck it, but he’d managed to secure a Friday off at the appropriate time, and he wondered if Shannon would be thrilled, or merely resentful of his presence. He’d missed every qualifying swim up to this point, and he would not have blamed her if she decided to welcome him with that reminder rather than any appearance of genuine welcome.

It would certainly be no less than he deserved.

But the case he hadn’t been able to discuss for so long was nearly at a close. On Monday, Jesse Rafael would be recalled before the court and closing arguments would be heard. There was a very good chance of indictment on all counts, and deservedly so. Fraud, racketeering and extortion had all been proven beyond any doubt, though they’d had to drop the rape and murder charges because the bastard had so thoroughly disposed of all evidence, bodies included, that they’d had no reasonable chance of bringing it home to him. He could still see the expression on Todd and Jennifer Bedlington’s faces when he’d broken it to them that their daughter Casey was unlikely to be found, nor her murderer to see justice this side of the grave. He’d carry that with him for the rest of his days.

But not today.

Today was Shannon’s day, and he was going to make it up to her, if she’d let him. All the late hours, the missed meets and training carpools he’d had to bail on, lobbing the ball to his housekeeper, to the neighbors, all so sympathetic that his daughter was growing up not only without a mother, but also, to a very real degree, without her father as well. Today was for her, he was here for her, and he was going to put every thought of Jesse Rafael from his mind.

. . . until he saw the exchange. Three rows down in the bleachers. A man of medium build in a quietly, outrageously expensive suit, sliding a briefcase across the floor with one foot to the man at his left, who in turn passed over a sealed brown envelope, bulky at the middle in a way that would have woken all Michael’s worst instincts even had he not already known, with painful, nightmarish intimacy, the identity of the man who received it.

Jesse goddamn Rafael.

What the hell?

Michael had his phone out before he fully realized he was reaching for it. Started to text his office, then changed his mind. Rafael had been released on bond. He had, technically, every right to sit out in the open at a local rec center swim meet and trade a briefcase for an envelope. It was the contents, Michael knew, of that envelope with might merit a call.

So he made the call. Traded a brief conversation with the sergeant whose detectives had so capably handled the case, gathering as much evidence to bring home against Rafael as they had it within their power to do.

“Sit tight, Mr. Abbott,” she advised brusquely. “We’ve got call enough to ask for a look, at least. Try not to attract his attention, and I’ll have two plainclothes officers on the premises in less than ten minutes.”

Michael thanked her as graciously as he could, given the tension that ran down his neck and spine. He broke the connection, and considered his options.

Staying put was probably the best one. He was directly behind the man, not even in his peripheral vision. Moving would change that; might occasion his notice. Staying put, letting Shannon compete . . .

Shit.

Shannon.

He knew, rationally, that she was in no particular danger at the moment. Knew that she was not the reason Rafael had come here—she could not possibly be—and that provided she stayed with her teammates, did her thing, blended in, there was no reason that could change.

Even so . . .

Michael hauled his phone out again. Texted, briefly, as succinct a message as he thought advisable.

Hit send.

Hoped to God she’d still be near enough her phone to hear it.

* * *

Shannon was putting the last of her personal items in her locker when her phone notification chimed. She hesitated, hand above the bag, then sighed and grabbed it, scanning the message, terse in the extreme.

> Am here. Can you get out?

She frowned.

Well wasn’t that just like her dad? Show up at her swim meet, expect her to leave . . . okay that actually wasn’t all that much like her dad. Not the asking her to leave, definitely, but also not the showing up. It was a rare day in the middle of the week they even saw each other by daylight. So this was out of the ordinary in every respect.

She considered the request again.

She didn’t particularly want to leave. Didn’t even want to ask her father why he needed her to. But the question was the kind she knew she would not be able to ignore. So she sent her reply: 

> ?

His came back a minute later. 

> Not safe here. Need you out.

That she had been half expecting some reply of the kind did nothing to soften the blow. It jolted through her stomach, deeply unpleasant, and she stumbled over her answer. Drafted, then discarded, two replies before finally sending the third: 

> K

She did not immediately rush to get ready after sending it. First, she indulged in a fit of temper, grabbing her things, flinging them to the ground and yelling at them unintelligibly, as if they were the reason she was being denied the chance to compete. She kicked them, slammed the locker shut and leaned her head against the flat, cool steel of the door for a couple long, hard-breathing minutes, struggling to reclaim her focus and the sense of perspective that went with it.

Her dad was not an asshole. He could be pretty fucking negligent in his own way, sure, but he was not an actual asshole. He wasn’t trying to wreck her day. She _knew_ that. Didn’t find it made her day less wrecked, but still tried to keep some sense of proportion overall.

Who knew what unsafe meant, really. Maybe she should tell him no. Tell him he owed her this. Tell him . . .

Nothing.

Who was she kidding, really? If Dad said get out, there was a reason for it. And knowing _that_ was what she hated most of all.

Defeated, dejected, she bent to gather her clothes.

She was not entirely all the way into them when the changing room door flew open.

* * *

Michael fidgeted with his phone, increasingly on edge, until Shannon’s affirmative pinged reassuringly back at him. Then, and only then, did he give himself permission to relax. He’d make it up to her, of course; explain and work out some way, somehow, to make this right. But the idea of her being in the building when and if they had to move to take Rafael in just didn’t sit right.

Now all he had to do was make his own way out, as unobtrusively as possible, and—

“Michael!” The voice had a commanding ring he knew vaguely from birthday parties of yesteryear. Emberly Atkinson’s mother had a set of lungs on her that would put a trained opera singer to shame, and she had no qualms about using them. He had once kind of admired that about her, but today it awoke in him nothing but fear. He started to swivel when the follow-up call came, the exact one he had been dreading.

“Michael Abbott! Up here!”

He turned too late to stop her announcement to the bleachers. Saw her waving cheerfully, heedless of the complete disaster her recognition of him had been. He did not even have the presence of mind to wave back. Instead he jerked back around to look down, three rows of bleachers below him, to where Jesse Rafael was staring directly back.

An uneasy suspension of reality hung over them both. Michael read the loathing, scorn and apprehension on Rafael’s face as easily as though they had been labelled for his convenience.

He knew, without needing to be told, that Rafael’s entire focus was on the brown paper envelope tucked into the front pocket of his blazer. Knew he had to be wondering if Michael had seen the entire transaction.

Michael was briefly determined to steel himself to reveal nothing; to look anywhere and everywhere but the pocket that held the envelope.

Then he realized, almost as immediately, that it didn’t matter. That Rafael would have to assume he had seen it, if only for his own protection. That he would act accordingly, whether or not Michael revealed a thing.

And he did.

Rafael made a mocking little salute, mouthed the words “Good morning, Mr. Abbott,” and rose to leave.

Michael instinctively rose also. To do what, he couldn’t say. Laying hands on the man was out of the question, unless he wanted to open himself to every imaginable legal headache. He had to cause or right to detain him. He couldn’t. But there had to be something he could do.

Even as he was thinking it, he saw a woman with three small children in tow making her way down the length of the bleachers, a tray of drinks balanced in one hand and a fourth child perched on her hip. Behind Michael was the ever-nearing, one-sided conversation of Emberly’s mother; she was pushing forcefully, purposefully, down over the bleachers, determined to converse, heedless of his back having been put to her with what even he had to admit had been devastatingly rude abruptness.

She was moving quickly, too.

It happened even as he was still in the process of planning it, instinct supplanting the need to hammer out any details of his intention. He beamed, wide and artificial, and turned with a gesture utterly unlike any of his usual mannerisms.

“Mrs. Atkinson! It’s been a long time, no question. How _are_ you?”

On the second-last word, his outflung hand made direct contact. The tray of drinks in the hand of the woman behind him went flying all over Jesse Rafael, spilling fizzing orange, brown and clear drinks down the front of his blazer.

Rafael jumped back with a clear, ringing expletive that had every parent within earshot shifting to pin him with a glare. Michael had crossed the space between them with a beaming, brittle smile and outstretched hand.

“Here you are, Mr. Rafael, let me help you with that.”

The blazer was half off before Rafael could sufficiently recover himself. The envelope, soaked by the soda, hung limply forward from the jacket pocket and Michael had no difficulty tearing it open as he wrestled the jacket from Rafael’s shoulders.

“The hell do you think you’re—” he broke off as the paper tore and three dark-jacketed booklets tumbled to the ground.

They lay on the tile between the two men a moment, and then Michael struck.

Rafael managed to lay hold of one, but the other two disappeared into the attorney’s massive fist. He flipped one open and whistled in low, careful appreciation.

“Sorry. Not Mr. Rafael after all, then? This passport says your name is John Deacon. A mistake on my part, I guess. Funny though,” he stared levelly at Rafael, “you’re the dead spit of a guy I’m about to put away for at least a decade. But you must not be him. If he were to get caught with fake passports at this stage of the game, that’d be curtains.”

Rafael’s entire face transformed in an instant. From tense and wary to openly malevolent. His fleshy lips drew back from expensively-doctored teeth and he actually hissed in Michael’s face.

“You have no right—”

“Well, let’s give the police a chance to figure out who had a right,” Michael decided. “They should be here any moment from—damn it, man, where do you think you’re going?”

Rafael ran. He had no hope of a direct attack, so he ran. Michael swore and looked around for anybody likely to be one of the promised plainclothes detectives.

He did not see them, but he did see Mrs. Atkinson, who seemed to take in stride what she had clearly put down to his eccentricity, and probably just one more thing to share with the carpool group about poor Shannon’s homelife, and was smiling benevolently at him as she approached.

“So nice to see you here today, Michael. Shannon must be glad you came.”

He had just enough presence of mind to blurt a gruff apology before recruiting her to his purpose.

“Can you stand over by the doors? I’m expecting—there will be police here. Shortly. But I need to go after that man.”

“The one you were just speaking with? The one heading into the locker rooms?”

Michael spun around to stare with grim, dawning horror at the demure skirted logo adorning the still-swinging door through which Rafael had passed.

“Yes,” he said hoarsely. Then, fearful, furious, “ _shit_.”

* * *

Shannon was nearly dressed when he came through the door: a man a little shorter than her dad, wearing a shirt, slacks and shoes that fairly stank of money. Every inch of him was meticulously, expensively groomed, which made his snarling breathlessness and wet shirtfront even weirder.

She stopped with her shirt clutched around her front, half buttoned, and stared in disbelief.

He stared back.

“Are you lost?” she spat, when he seemed disinclined to immediately back out again in a shower of apologies, the way every dad did in his situation.

But this guy was not the apologizing kind. He was the leering appreciatively kind. He leered, and she instinctively clutched her shirt closer together at the neck.

“So sorry, sweetheart,” he said lightly, moving farther into the dressing room. “I needed a shortcut. I’ll be out of all that gorgeous hair of yours in just a moment, I promise.”

She wanted to yell at him; to call for security. But what even was the point? He wasn’t looking at her anymore, he really was heading for the far side of the change room and the door set there. In another ten, fifteen seconds tops he would be on the other side, and she would be able to finish dressing, meet her dad, and ask him what the hell he meant by—

—barging into the locker room.

Too.

Seriously, _fathers_.

“Dad!” she exclaimed, drawing her shirt even tighter together in the front than she had when she’d been yelling at a stranger. “Jesus, I’m coming! You didn’t have to come check—”

But he wasn’t listening to her. Wasn’t even looking at her. He was staring past her, to where the first man had stopped. Turned. Stared in mounting wonder at first her father, then her, then back to her dad again.

 _Then_ her dad looked at her, and she saw something terrible in his face.

“Shannon, _run_!”

The order had not even fully registered before the man with the leer reached her. He threw an arm around her throat, dragging her back with brute force to stand in the middle of the change room, her shirt gaping open, the entirety of her body offering some very slight, meager protection against his.

“Well shit!” her captor laughed. “Is it Christmas? Because somehow this feels like Christmas.”

Her father looked as though he had been cut from stone. Every part of his face was hard and set when he spoke.

“This is not your way out, Rafael.”

Shannon had never heard her father sound like that. Never.

She’d never seen him look this way, either. Like he was staring down into his own grave.

“You think so?” the man holding her, Rafael, wondered. He fished around in his slacks pocket like he was looking for his car keys, but pulled out a knife instead. He held the knife, though, with the same easy confidence that most men held their car keys. The hairs along the back of Shannon’s neck and arms all stood at attention. “See, I disagree. I think she’s exactly my way out of here.”

He settled the knife at a point somewhere between her lower ribs. Pressed just hard enough to make her flinch.

“Dad . . .”

“Yeah,” Rafael said softly. “ _Dad_. How about that, huh?” His free hand framed her jaw line with eerie delicacy, as though she were fine china. “Shit, you kept her secret, didn’t you, Abbott? And that’s coming from a guy who was actively looking for your soft spot. You’ve gotta know I had people digging. Needed to find some way I could lean on you. But they never found her.”

Her father didn’t answer.

“Though I guess,” Rafael went on, almost cheerful now, “I can see why. I mean, line of work you’re in, all the desperate folks you piss off? Imagine them ever finding out you had a pretty girl like this . . . Christ,” he leaned over her shoulder, staring down her open shirt, “you know, Mike, I think she’s got the most perfect tits I’ve ever seen.”

Michael’s whole body jerked violently, as if he were at silent war with the strain of holding himself back. Rafael’s satisfied chuckle shook his chest.

“This is gonna be fun,” he whispered, so low that Shannon was pretty sure her dad hadn’t even been meant to hear it. She could also tell, from the way his expression turned to thunder and granite, that he had.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and was mortified to hear her own voice breaking. “I should have left right when you—“

“No, baby, no,” her dad cut in. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Shannon.”

“That’s right. This isn’t Shannon’s fault. We can’t put this on her. It’s on _you_ , isn’t it, Mike? Just like it’s on you do exactly as I tell you from here on out.

“Let me tell you how this is going to go,” Rafael continued. “You’re going to stand there, and you are going to let me leave with her. You are not going to try to stop me.”

“Like hell I won’t,” her father growled. Rafael was unbothered.

“No. You won’t. Know how I know that, Mike?” He paused. “Well, go on. Ask me how I know.”

Her father didn’t speak. Rafael sighed. Quick as breath, quick as thought, his hand left her jaw and knotted in Shannon’s hair near the scalp. He jerked her head back and bared her neck. A quick slice of the blade—she shrieked as much from the shock as the pain—and blood welled up from a shallow gash.

Her father made a sound like a dynamite blast detonating underground.

“Ask me, Mike,” Rafael ordered.

“How,” her father rasped, perfectly obedient, frighteningly broken. “How do you know?”

“I know because when it comes to where it counts, you’re just like the rest of them. All the other parents whose daughters never came home. You want to hope. You want to believe you have a chance of saving her.

“Oh, sure,” he went on airily, “you’ll tell the cops it was me. I’m expecting that. You’ll try to put them on my trail. Because you want to believe it will end differently than all the others. Even though you know who I am, what I do, and how goddamn great I am at making sure the bodies are never found? You are still going to want to think you’re special.”

He pressed his face into Shannon’s curls and inhaled deeply.

“Special like she is. To you.”

Shannon couldn’t look at her dad anymore. Couldn’t stand to see on his face what everything Rafael said was doing to him. She dropped her gaze as he dragged her back with him, closing the distance to the door, talking the whole way.

“Even though you know exactly what it feels like to tell their moms and dads that the case is now considered cold. Even though you know what their faces look like when they hear there haven’t been any leads.” He had reached the door, Shannon still pressed so tightly to his front that she could feel, pressed against the curve of her backside, full proof of exactly how much he was enjoying every moment of this. “You are going to want to believe you’re different. That _she’s_ the one who will make it out alive.

“And you know what, Mike?” She could feel his smile against her cheek; the heat of his breath fluttered the hair at her temple. “That suits me just fine.”

Then he shoved the door open with his foot and dragged her through, bolting it shut moments before her father’s fist thudded into the panels on the other side.

“He has a nasty temper, your dad,” he observed, maneuvering her so she stood at his side, his arm slung a little too tightly around her shoulders. The knife he pressed to her neck with that hand was hidden beneath her voluminous brown curls; she knew, with a kind of cold, gut-settled certainty that nobody would be able to see it.

He pushed her toward the door, scanning the crowd.

“You’re going to be smart about this, though, right Shannon?” he said conversationally, guiding her around a knot of excited kids. “Because I could stab any one of these little cuties quicker than you could ever hope to explain yourself to whatever dumbfuck rent-a-cop you found in this place. You know that, don’t you?”

She had known it in the abstract before he even said it, but once he put it out into the air that way, she thought she might be sick.

Of course he could do that. Of course he _would_ do that. There was a cold animal pragmatism to this man that made her believe every word he said. A man with this much upper hand had no reason to lie. He just needed to tell her enough truth to keep her moving along according to his schedule.

They were in the parking lot moments later, and he pushed her toward a sleek, late-model two door vehicle parked near the front of the lot.

“Over you go, sweetheart,” he instructed, shoving her through the driver’s side door, across to the passenger seat.

She tried the door as soon as she got there, and was deflated, though unsurprised, when it did not yield.

“You all try that,” he said conspiratorially, sliding in beside her. “Every single one of you.”

He flashed her a smile that was nine-tenths leer, and the car roared to life.

“Buckle up. Don’t want you to get hurt.”

The parody of concern turned her stomach, but she obeyed all the same. Maybe it really was like he’d said to her dad, but she wanted to believe she could escape. That she would be found, or rescued, or able to get away somehow.

Rafael seemed like a guy who practically disappeared girls for a living. He would probably succeed with her. She knew that, in the very depth of her bones, but it didn’t help. She still felt cruelly bound to hope.

* * *

“We got footage of the car.”

Sergeant Reyes had the kind of clear, calm voice that could cut through a crowd, but Michael still struggled to follow her meaning. He’d watched them arrive, assemble, interview and communicate as though he had never witnessed the process before. Like it was happening to somebody else.

“You said she had a phone,” Reyes continued. Michael forced himself to make eye contact; hear what she was telling him. “It wasn’t with her things. Did she have it on her when she was taken?”

Michael tried to think.

“She must have,” he said at last. “If it wasn’t in the locker, she had to have had it on her. Can you use it to trace her?”

“If she’s able to turn it on, absolutely. Would she know to try?”

“Yes.” His answer was instant; absolute. “She’d know.”

Reyes nodded, accepting his evaluation of Shannon’s mental acuity without question.

She trusted him, Michael thought, to be the kind of father who knew things about his daughter. Not the kind of father who only managed to show up to the last swim of the season, stumble on an about-to-be-convicted mob boss planning his bail jump and get his only child kidnapped.

 _Probably killed, too_.

The ugly thought found its way to the front of his consciousness before he could stop it. His stomach heaved. He knew, though, didn’t he? Knew Rafael better than almost anybody by now, unless it was the cops who had actually worked the case, chasing leads on the disappearance of Casey Bedlington until they all came up cold.

Casey’s phone hadn’t helped her. So what were the odds Shannon’s would?

* * *

“I have to say,” Rafael admitted, as they turned off the main highway onto a dirt road heading up the side of the mountain, “at first I was pissed my documents guy wanted to meet there. Couldn’t miss his kid’s swim meet, he said. Jesus Christ! First class forger, family man? Gimme a fucking break. But now? I’m glad it worked out this way. Not just you being Mike’s kid, which is pretty fucking great, but having you with me out here. It’s going to be nice. Like closing a circle.”

Shannon didn’t know what he meant by that, but she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of hearing her ask. She sat in cold silence as the dirt road narrowed to a single car’s width. Pine needles scratched and squeaked at the side of the car, drawing a grimace from Rafael, but he kept going. Turned off the narrow road onto something little more than a path. The squeaking intensified.

“Fuck,” he muttered, then sighed. “Ah well. Can’t take it with me.”

Abruptly, the woods fell away and they rolled into a surprisingly large, flat clearing. The car bumped just slightly over the mossy ground, pulling up in front of a tiny cabin.

Rafael hauled her back out the way she’d gone in. She knocked her knee against the gearshift and stumbled on landing, but he just pushed her along in front of him, forcing her to get her feet in order as they went. Inside the cabin he indicated the couch, and she sat, obedient for now.

Until she could figure out what to do.

For the moment Rafael seemed content to ignore her. His attention was focused on a heavy dark brick of a phone anchored in a docking station. He hefted it and punched in a number, waited a beat and addressed the party on the other end without preamble.

“I’ve had to advance the schedule. Need to be gone as soon as you can get here.”

The reply seemed to please him.

“An hour? Yeah.” His gaze shifted to where she sat on the couch. “An hour suits me just fine.”

* * *

“Mike?” Sergeant Reyes again cut into his focus.

The hubbub around him had changed from that of a swim meet disrupted by a kidnapping to that of the station, alive with activity. He sat, forgotten, strangely small, on a chair pushed up against a desk. He looked up at her voice and saw the device she held: a small screen displaying a map, a bright blue dot flashing in the uppermost right-hand quadrant.

“She’s turned on her phone.”

* * *

“I’m glad you brought this,” Rafael murmured. His face was by her ear. His hands, skimming slowly over her waist and then around to her backside, had easily picked out the unyielding shape of the phone against the curve of her buttock. He’d plucked it from her pocket to smile at it, then smiled down at her.

“This cabin has always been in a dead zone. They won’t be able to trace a cell. But I think it’s important that before we’re through, we leave your dad a little memento of our time together.”

Shannon’s skin prickled hot and cold at the meaning behind his words. She looked away.

He hummed softly as he called up her camera, slid it to video and hit record. Then he propped the device up on the end table, checked the angle, and leaned in again. Tipped her chin up so he could stare into her face.

“You look like him,” he said softly. “Did you know that? You must know that. Kids hear that shit all the time. How much they look like this one or that one. Parents eat it up. But it’s true. You’re prettier. Younger. But I can see him in you all the same.”

A smile curved, slow and mean, across his face.

“That’s going to make it a lot of fun when you start to cry.”

She nearly started right then and there, just hearing him say so. She choked back a sob as he gently pushed her hair back and stared into her eyes.

“So. You’re a swimmer, huh? Doesn’t get me quite as hot as if you were a gymnast, but it’s still giving me a little tingle, thinking of you in a bathing suit. Looks like it keeps that sweet little ass of yours nice and tight. And as for these . . .” He lowered his hands to unbutton her shirt. “I wasn’t lying, you know. They really are the most perfect tits I’ve ever seen.”

He pressed his lips to the upper swell of one, and she shuddered.

“Christ,” he mumbled, lips tracking over her breast, “you smell so fucking good. What is that? Perfume? Deodorant? Or is it just the sweet, unspoiled smell of teenage girl?”

He drew back, studying her thoughtfully.

“You’re definitely the youngest one I’ve ever brought up here. Hell, brought anywhere, since I was your age myself.” He put his head to one side. “You a virgin, Shannon?”

She shook. All over.

“Wh-what does it even matter?”

“Well, if by that you mean, is there an answer that will make me stop? Then no. It doesn’t matter. But if this is your first time with a man—with anybody—then I have to admit it’s going to be one hell of a turn on. And I might try to go a little easy on you, if you asked me nicely.”

“What,” Shannon said bitterly, “rape me gently?”

This startled a laugh out of him. He smiled at her in what seemed to be genuine appreciation.

“You really are Michael Abbot’s fucking kid, aren’t you? Fine then, honey. Have it your way.”

He stood to unzip his pants.

She didn’t want to see it. Didn’t want to look. But he took her by the nape of her neck and forced her head around so that she had to stare directly at his cock, already erect, as she had suspected it was back in the locker room when he’d been taunting her father.

The idea of him staying excited for the whole drive up, on the strength of his own imagining of everything he planned to do to her . . .

She still didn’t cry. Not yet. But she did shudder.

“You’re impressed,” he suggested. “I can tell you’re impressed.”

When she said nothing, and lowered her eyes, he gave her a hard shake.

“Tell me you’re impressed, Shannon.”

“I’m impressed,” she whispered.

“Damn right. Now it’s your turn to impress me. Let’s get a real look at those tits. Take your bra off. And all the rest of it.”

He took a small step back to give her room to obey. She struggled out of her bra, and flinched at the sound of his softly-hissed exhalation of appreciation. Her jeans went next, with some effort. Then she paused.

His hand hovered, loose and ready at his side. Beside the pocket with the knife.

“This is going to be a lot harder on you if you’re shy,” he said mildly. “Just saying.”

She shook her head. Shook all over. Pressed her hands to her mouth. He sighed.

“Right. Well, you deal with it however you gotta deal with it, Shannon, but I’m on a deadline, here. So over you go.”

He caught her by the ankles and jerked her down on the couch, so her upper body was lying on the seat, her head propped up against the back of the couch. He straddled her chest with an ease clearly born of long practice, and looked her straight in the eye.

“I have a pair of pliers in the drawer over there. If I feel your teeth on me, I’ll pull every last one of them out of your head, and I’ll still fuck your mouth when I’m done. Got it?”

She stared at him, mesmerized by the cold clarity of the threat. Slowly, as if compelled by forces outside her own body, she nodded.

“Good,” he said, and flashed her a smile. “Glad we got that settled.”

She opened her mouth for him. She had to. She didn’t see how she could refuse and still be able to kid herself that she was getting out of this alive. So she opened her mouth and he shoved his cock in, no further preamble, and the size and smell and feel of it made her gag almost instantly.

He didn’t thrust deeper, but neither did he withdraw. He just waited, patient, until she settled her stomach. Then he grinned down at her.

“I’ve got a feeling you’re gonna be a natural.”

He thrust. She choked. He withdrew, let her settle, then thrust again. It turned into a nightmare of gulps and gags, Shannon gasping for air when she could, trying not to swallow her own spit, flavored with the musky taste of him, but also hating how it felt when she started to drool all the spit she refused to swallow. He didn’t seem to mind when she struggled for air, and he let her catch her breath when she needed to. At one point, as she was trying to reclaim the rhythm of her lungs, he threaded his fingers through the curls at her temples and adjusted the angle of her neck just slightly, so he could better look down into her eyes.

“Not crying yet? Well. Give it time. Hey, can you sort of choke like that again? Like you did when I just . . . _there_. Yeah,” as she retched when the tip of his cock jammed against the back of her throat. “Just like that. Feels so fuckin’ good.”

Her eyes watered as he leaned in, bracing his arms on the back of the couch, and forced himself deeper into her throat. She clutched involuntarily at the couch, fingers scraping and scrabbling against the fabric, and struggled to remember how to breathe. Was the nose involved? Was her mouth? The only thing that could fit into her mouth right now was _him_ and he was everywhere in it. Down her throat, sealing it, then easing back . . . _there_.

She stole a breath.

He sealed her throat again.

Then he eased back, and she stole another.

It was a grotesque, intimate kind of attention she needed to pay to the twitch and surge of his muscles. Needed to read the moment he intended to withdraw, so she could steal another breath of air. He didn’t seem inclined to help her, so she had to figure it out on her own. Once she settled into the rhythm, though, so did he.

He fucked her throat with brief, firm, staccato strokes that held steady until the very end, when suddenly he started punching fiercely, almost frantically into her mouth and she lost all ability to think, let alone breathe.

Her vision cut and cleared. Swam out of focus, darkened at the edges . . . and then he came. Spilled into her mouth, down the back of her throat, thick and salty and bitter. She convulsed when he withdrew, gagging and retching. He watched her, smiling a little, until she settled. Then he flopped easily down onto the couch at her side and gave her hair a playful ruffle.

“Told you, kid. You’re a natural.”

* * *

They didn’t run the lights or sirens as they advanced up the mountain. Michael found the relative quiet of their advancement almost maddening, no matter how well he understood its purpose.

He appreciated that Sergeant Reyes made no promises she could not be certain she’d be able to keep. No reassuring “we’ll get her back” or similar empty platitude. She simply gripped the wheel and kept her eyes on the road with an air of grim purpose.

The single-minded intent of a woman who _did_ intend to get Shannon back.

As long as she was still there to get.

* * *

“You know,” Rafael reflected, stroking his cock with absent-minded purpose, “I haven’t come up here since before the trial started.”

Shannon, legs tucked up under her chin, pressed into the farthest corner of the couch and wondered how it was possible that the man sharing his personal history with her could be every bit as upsetting as him fucking her throat.

The way he was clearly stiffening himself up for a second round while he spoke probably had a lot to do with it.

“I had a different girl here, then. Met her a little farther down the side of the mountain. Not sure what the hell she was doing up here, to be honest. She probably told me, but I wasn’t really paying attention to the conversation, if you know what I mean.”

His laugh rattled her nerves.

“I made sure she got all the way back down the mountain, first. Nice and safe. She showed up on a few surveillance cameras around town before I brought her back up here.”

He jerked his free hand casually over his shoulder, indicating the woods beyond the window.

“She’s still up here.”

Shannon pressed her mouth against her bare knees and suppressed a shudder. Rafael glanced down at his lap and assessed the progress there.

“Almost ready here, kid. Won’t drag this out much longer. I know it can’t be easy, just . . . waiting for it.” He shot her a considering, sideways glance. “All of it.”

She wrapped her arms around her knees and hid her face in them. He sighed.

“I could bullshit you, if you’d rather. Say I was gonna leave you alive up here, to wait for your dad. But you’re probably not stupid enough to buy that, are you?”

She stayed hidden behind her arms.

“So I’ll just promise to make sure it’s over as fast as I can manage. Might mean a little less suffering for your dad, when they tell him you went quick, but that’s what the video is for, right? He’ll get to see I had some fun with you before it was over.”

They lapsed into near silence, then. She heard the soft slaps and grunts as he worked to make himself hard again, but nothing else until he sighed and spoke.

“All right, if I don’t want to put us over schedule, I’m going to need your help. Need you to show me those gorgeous tits, Shannon. Maybe play with them a little? Or else the chopper’s gonna touch down before I’ve even had the chance to fuck you, never mind figure out a spot to leave your body.”

She jerked her head up from her arms, then, eyes flashing, rage and fear spilling out of her in one sputtering stream.

“Stop it! Just—just fucking stop it! I know you’re going to kill me, okay? I know it! My dad wouldn’t have looked like he did back there if he didn’t know it, too. But—but do you have to talk about it? You’re going to fuck me. Talk about that, whatever, I don’t . . . it doesn’t matter as much. But you don’t need to keep on talking about _killing_ me. Do you?” She squeezed her legs tight against her chest and looked at him in angry desperation. “Please.”

He considered her for a moment, then shrugged.

“Sure, kid. Whatever. Put it out of your mind, if it makes you happy. And hey! Speaking of happy,” he indicated his lap with a nod. “Would you look at that?” She followed his gaze to the new stiffness of his cock, then looked back in time to catch his smile. “You got me all ready again.”

He leaned in to tug her arms down to her sides and press a rough kiss to the side of her mouth.

“How’d you know I just love to see a pretty girl beg?”

* * *

He carried her from the front room to the little bedroom at the back of the cabin, bridal style. Mocking her with kisses trailed down her neck, spread across her breasts, pressed to her lips. As if he were her lover. She longed to struggle, to resist, to beg him to let her walk on her own, but she hadn’t quite had the nerve.

He made her carry the phone, its recording function paused until he got her settled on the bright patchwork quilt that decorated the old brass bed. Then he held the phone out at arm’s length, angled it until her naked body filled the frame behind him, and gave the lens a wave and a grin.

“Hey there, Mike. Second and final installment of this little series. Your girl’s been a real trooper, here, and I’m sorry it has to end like this for her. But she’s gonna take it like a champ, I just know it. She’s got that old Abbott fighting spirit. Funny, actually,” he turned to give her a conspiratorial grin, “I don’t mind it nearly so much coming from her. On Shannon it’s just kind of . . . cute.”

He turned his attention to the bed with all the spatial attention of an artist planning an installation.

“Let’s see how we’re going to set this up.”

He moved around to the side, checking the angle of his own approach through the camera. A thoughtful crinkle deepened between his eyebrows.

“I think it’s more important than anything else that Dad is able to see your face for this. So for that . . .” he propped the phone up on the night table. Then he advanced on the bed, pressing Shannon down onto her back and climbing between her legs.

“Now. Cute as a button as you are, it’s important that you look at the camera for this, okay? So if you’ll just turn your head to the side—yeah. There’s a good girl,” as she obeyed. “That’s just how I want you to stay. If you have to close your eyes or whatever, go for it. But he needs to see your face.”

She had in fact just opened them to look at the phone, but as soon as he said that she flinched and squeezed them shut.

In the pinkish filtered light that illuminated the back of her eyelids, she could almost pretend she was alone. That she didn’t feel the wide, blunt head probing gently between her legs, nor the rough, casual rhythm he set up with his knuckle at the very top of her labia, digging in at just the right angle.

How the hell did he even know how to do that? She wasn’t going to come. Not really. She was too tense. But something about how he was digging his knuckle in just there was definitely _doing_ something. She felt . . . softer, somehow. Warm and—Jesus, he was actually getting her wet.

Fearful little whimpers spilled from her nose and the corners of her mouth. She could not see him smile, but she heard it in his voice.

“See, honey? I can make it nice for you. We don’t have all day, but since it looks like your first fuck is also gonna be your last, no reason you can’t enjoy yourself a little. At least,” his weight shifted forward, and she sank deeper into the mattress, “enjoy yourself enough.”

This time when he pressed against her, there was an easy lack of friction to the act. The fat knob head of his cock split her outer labia without resistance and he pressed comfortably, confidently, against her entrance.

“I do want you to open your eyes for this, Shannon,” he said softly. “Just this part. Look right at your phone, honey. This is what your dad needs to see.”

She wanted to refuse. To deny him this pleasure, at least. Yes he could fuck her and hit or and kill her but by God he couldn’t force her to do this.

His hand was on her face now. Gentle, pushing her hair back.

“You don’t want to. I get that. But you’ve also gotta ask yourself, Shannon: how much pain do you want to be in at the end? That thing you told me not to talk about: you want it to be slow? That knife of mine . . . I could bury you still breathing, you know. In a technical sense. Or you can make me happy, here, and I can do my best to make sure you feel as little as possible in the end. Even bury you someplace nice. Casey, now—the last one? She’s in a really pretty spot, just up the hill from a little creek over there. Doesn’t that sound like a nice place to be buried, Shannon?”

The absolute fucking bastard. Her eyes welled up with tears of rage as she opened them. She did not look at him, and he didn’t try to make her.

Just whispered, “There’s a good girl.” Shifted his weight in a way that suggested he had looked over at the camera, and added, “Isn’t she a good girl, Mike?”

Then he pressed in, inch by inexorable, agonizing inch, and Shannon lay stiff beneath him, staring at the camera like it alone could possibly save her.

* * *

Michael did his best to stay out of everybody’s way. It was the most foreign feeling of his life, being completely superfluous to something this important unfolding in his presence, but he had already left the corpse of his ego on the floor of the rec center locker room, so this actually came surprisingly easy to him.

He stood where Sergeant Reyes told him to. He wore the vest she gave him. He was not a praying man, so he didn’t do that, but he did appeal to the woods around him in a more general kind of sense: a recognition of his own smallness, of Shannon’s smallness, in the middle of a place that did not care what happened to them, at the mercy of a man who cared far too much.

He thought of Casey Bedlington and how he had resolved, privately she would be the last one. How he hadn’t even been able to give her parents the closure they deserved.

How he might shortly be in their place.

The dark car was still parked outside the cabin they were surrounding. That should have been reassuring, but there was evidence of a helicopter having landed in the clearing on more than one occasion, and the thought that it might already have landed again today sat between Michael’s shoulder blades, sharp and heavy, so that he could neither sit or stand in comfort.

“All right,” Reyes was conferring with her team. The plan cut in and out of his consciousness-there was a sniper, somehow? Not in the highly trained sense. More in the cop-from-a-mountain-town sense. Somebody with a long rifle, steady hand and a good eye.

Michael was not exactly inspired to confidence by the thought, so he chose not to dwell on it overmuch.

“We’ve got eyes on them, kind of,” Reyes was relaying to him, directly, and he tried to focus. “They’re in the back room. They’re . . . close. We need to move them apart. Give him a clear shot. We’re thinking a distraction.”

The risk he sensed underlying the plan churned Michael’s stomach. Reyes seemed to read his hesitation, and the reason for it. She pressed on with her rationale, firm, unyielding.

“If he knows we’re out here, Mike, it gets much worse for her. Much more risky. You know how it goes.”

He still saw with vivid, cruel clarity the look on Rafael’s face in the locker room, the moment he’d figured out who Shannon was.

Who she was to _him_.

Michael had a pretty good idea that even if they did get the drop on Rafael, he’d do his damndest to make sure Shannon didn’t make it out of this alive.

He reached, with glacial slowness, for the phone in his pocket.

“I can give you a distraction,” he said. “Just say when.”

* * *

Everything below her waist was somehow numb and on fire by turns. Her legs were splayed to an angle that pained her, the muscles first screaming at the width to which he had forced them, then tingling, then going kind of pins and needles all over, so she felt them much less.

Between her legs was even worse. That, she still felt. Beyond the initial burn and stretch of entry there was a kind of all-over-battered feeling to her insides, like he was pushing them all back out of his way, careless of what it meant for her in the process.

And through every minute of it, she had to watch the phone.

Let the camera see her, he’d encouraged. Let it record every minute of this. And she let him. Hated herself for it, for how scared she was of the pain he’d inflict if she refused. Hated herself for giving in to that fear.

Hated, more than anything, knowing that the fear she felt, reflected on her face, would be the last thing her father ever knew about her.

Still she did not cry. Not really. Her eyes had watered, sure, and she had made noises he seemed to love—thin, wet little whimpers that made him growl deep in his throat—but Shannon knew she had not cried.

It was really the only victory she felt she could fairly claim.

He must be nearly done, she thought. How long had they been there? Half an hour, forty minutes? Maybe not that long, but it _felt_ like it. The helicopter would be coming soon, and she was still alive.

He’d have to fix that before he left.

Her breath came quicker; faster. So, she realized, did his. She had no real frame of reference, but she was pretty sure that was probably a sign. He picked up pace, too, fucked her harder—grabbed her hips, angled them up toward him. She shrieked—and there. He rammed deep inside of her and she felt it. Every twitch, every jerk, as he shouted wordless, angry, into the pillow by her head.

Filled her, twice over.

She turned her face from the phone at last, and stared at the ceiling. His weight on her was stifling. Crushing. But that she could even feel it meant she was still alive, and there was some kind of comfort in that.

He groaned.

Rolled off her.

Sat up.

“Damn, Shannon,” he said softly. “What a fucking waste this is gonna be.”

She pressed her hands to her face.

That’s when her phone rang.

* * *

The shot split the clean silence of the mountain air.

Shouts and footsteps followed.

All was silent in the cabin.

Then the radio crackled to life.

“We got him.”

Reyes glanced over at Michael. Flicked the button on her radio.

“Shannon?”

Another crackle.

“Got her too.”

* * *

Shannon was more grateful for the blanket they’d wrapped around her than literally any other thing in her life. She knew it was nonsensical, but there it was. The idea of them finding her dead body was actually, objectively slightly less horrifying than the idea of her father seeing her naked body and knowing that Rafael had seen it, too.

She was glad he didn’t have to.

There were a lot of people talking to her, and she was vaguely aware of talking to them, too. Of being allowed to dress herself, eventually, and encouraged gently to go with her father to the hospital in town.

Then they put her in the car, and her dad was beside her, and she collapsed against him as the tears she had spent all afternoon holding back finally soaked his shirt.

“Honey,” he said raggedly, and held her. “Christ, Shan. I’m sorry. I’m so . . . honey.”

The drive down the mountain was a warm, salty wet haze of grateful tears. She snuggled in close to him like she hadn’t since she was a little girl. Let him play with her hair and kiss her forehead, and forget, for just a bit, the actual reason that she needed him to.

It was only as they pulled into the town limits that she remembered what she had to tell him.

“Dad, there’s a girl. Another girl. Not alive—he said she was buried up there. By a creek. Casey?”

Her father started beneath her.

“Jesus,” he hissed. “Really?” Then, exultant, “Jesus.”

Shannon stared up at his face, sensing the magnitude of what she’d been able to share. When he smiled down at her, though, there was no triumph; only tenderness.

“Her parents have been wondering, honey. This is a good thing. It means . . . it means they won’t have to, now.”

Shannon nodded. She settled in against him.

“Who was she?”

“She was . . . his last. The one that put us onto this angle of attack. When she disappeared he was connected with some activity in the area. We didn’t know about the cabin; it’s not in his name. But she helped us get this close to him, anyway.”

Shannon didn’t like the explanation.

“Not why you know her, Dad,” she sighed, an edge of teenage exasperation creeping into her voice. “Who _was_ she?”

Her dad understood. Searched his memory for some details to give respectful flesh to Casey’s humanity, when she had still had it.

“She was a bright young lady. Only child. Parents loved her . . . very much. Last year of engineering at college, and interning for a telecom company over the summer.”

He looked out the window as the squad car pulled into the hospital parking lot.

“That’s what brought her up here, actually. She was working in the mountains that week.”

The car pulled to a halt outside the emergency room doors. Michael undid his belt, and Shannon reached for the last piece of the picture taking shape in her head, the answer to a question she hadn’t even fully remembered to ask.

“Working doing what?”

A hospital orderly opened the door. Her father slid out, and extended a hand for her to hold, warm and solid and stabilizing.

Real.

He smiled.

“Installing cell towers.”

He helped her out of the car, and they walked into the hospital together.


End file.
